Restaurant review: Castagna reimagined -- radically

The OregonianIt's as if Pink Martini woke up one day and decided to become Lady Gaga.

The recent transformation of Castagna, one of Portland's most respected restaurants, feels that radical.

To call Castagna understated has always been, well, an understatement. But now, the wallflower of Portland's high-end restaurant scene -- defiantly untrendy and serving the same intelligent Italian-French country cooking for 10 years running -- is suddenly at the apex of avant-garde cooking: super-challenging, super-sophisticated, sometimes exhilarating and unlike anything in Portland.

This fall, owner Monique Siu did more than replace her departing chef. With the economy throwing a gut punch at fine dining and Portland's celebrated restaurant scene reveling in food carts and sandwich shops, Siu did the unthinkable. She threw out everything familiar and gambled on the kind of intellectual cooking more typically found at destination restaurants in New York, Chicago and Spain.

The kitchen is now in the inspired hands of 28-year-old Matt Lightner, fresh from the trenches of Mugaritz, one of Spain's food-forward temples. Lightner's brave new world comes with deep savors, exquisite beauty, and strange and powerful botanicals in dishes constructed like Frank Gehry's wild and wavy walls.

Every plate is completely different, with its own visual drama, textural surprises and fascinating ideas. Halibut poached in buttermilky ricotta whey, then cloaked, like a Christo installation, beneath an outsized, slow-cooked cabbage leaf -- are you kidding? But unlike the late Lucier, these are not high-priced gimmicks passed off as provocative innovation. Lightner is skillful and original, and prices aren't in the stratosphere; three courses run around $50 to $60.

But the approach is not for everyone (meat-and-potato types need not apply). The menu is hard to decipher and servers are more friendly souls than guides to this promised land. Dishes have no actual names, just a cryptic list of ingredients, with one dominant flavor -- like "chestnuts" or "leeks" -- highlighted in large type, but little sense of how the components are supposed to come together. You're on your own to connect the dots on your plate.

If you're not a hard-core foodie or at least game for adventure, you could feel as lost as the Blazers without Greg Oden.

Just jump in and order the "crab," delicate Dungeness shreds pinched into mounds with bright herbs and hillocks of amaranth seeds, which taste like hot cereal with a high IQ. Toss it in the brown butter pooled in the middle, then dip each bite into the free-floating blobs of tart lemon foam. Is it a salad? I don't know. I'd just call it perfect: delicious and beautiful on its own terms.

The OregonianOxtails with celery rootLightner often uses one ingredient several ways in the same dish, to fascinating effect. Sensuously grilled matsutake mushrooms arrive ankle-deep in garlic broth jumping with fat orange spheres of trout roe and dark-roasted pine nuts. Lightner doubles-down on the matsutake's pine forest essence -- and visual power -- by using it again, as a garnish, laying raw white mushroom silhouettes on top.

In another preparation, leeks turn up as fat stalks roasted to a blissful sweet intensity and then again as super-crispy, translucent "chips" made from the charred dried skin, all arranged with clouds of clotted cream and plump mussels in a briny perfume that goes right to the brain. The whole thing is showered in -- suspend your disbelief here -- black ash, a subtle nutty powder made from charred hazelnuts. The most inspired dish I've eaten all year.

Vegetables, at the center of Lightner's thinking, are elevated to surprising heights.

Bands of vinegared carrots slash through exquisite globes of roasted potatoes and sunchokes set over vibrant tarragon aioli. Duck slices (perfect one night, tough the next) seemed incidental next to eye-popping purple carrots mingled with a sweet-spiced fermented garlic paste black with intensity.

But many dishes play the same notes: rich and super savory. As a result, multiple courses don't always flow well, as even individual dishes can be intense. To follow a dish of "salsify," (marvelously caramelized roots lavished with buttery bread crumbs, coins of bone marrow and bone marrow emulsion) with a dish of "celery root" (green puree surrounding a syrupy braise of oxtails) is to find your liver starring in a movie called "Armageddon."

Like many young chefs, Lightner could use more restraint, some sharper contrasts. His innovations would stand out all the more if we were given a little relief -- some bitter greens among the extravagant fields, perhaps, or even a simple salad showcasing his fascination with fresh herbs.

In a city swimming with bread pudding and crème brulée, Castagna's desserts show how exciting new ideas can be. Are you ready for a square of sweet potato ice cream roofed with twig-thin, espresso-coated bread sticks, all entwined with tiny black marshmallows, shaved chocolate and dried cranberries? It's terrifically familiar and far out, like Thanksgiving on Mars. I'd come here for the closers alone.

The once-austere dining room is now warmer and sexier, with pale light, slate walls and candles glowing everywhere. But service needs work, as waiters seem bewildered by the new approach. Castagna's kitchen needs a translator: informed, confident servers who can bring us along on this unusual ride from the moment we sit down. And, good grief, why is Motown playing on the sound system? Does anyone really want to "hitchhike" to Marvin Gaye while eating food as riveting as a Charlie Parker riff?

But these should be relatively easy fixes. The most difficult task, finding a bold, convincing talent for the kitchen, has been achieved. On the gutsy level, Siu exceeded expectations in these wallet-quivering times. She could have refocused on happy hour and wood-oven pizza and called it good.

Destination cooking is a hard sell a town where casual rules. But if Portland wants to live up to its reputation as a serious restaurant city, it needs more than great food carts and storefronts. Castagna is breaking through.

The OregonianMatthew Lightner in his kitchenSumming Up:

Grade: B+

Cuisine and scene: A reliable outpost of classic European cooking transforms into a bold, avant-garde kitchen. This is the ambitious, visually dramatic, destination food Portland has been lacking.